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Bodiless Gifts What a paradox what a cruelty what an irony there is here- that inner life and imagination may lie dull and dormant unless released awakened by an intoxication or disease A human poses the ability to develop specific talents in order to compensate for a deficiency in other areas In an extreme view Oliver Sacks explains how he a neurologist and psychiatrist witnesses these talents brought out by a disease Many individuals overlooked by society and classical science as challenged have developed great talents in the mist of their severe illnesses By stepping away from the contradictions between classical mindless neurology and bodiless psychiatry Sacks is able to observe gifts in certain individuals who are severely affected by psychological or physical illnesses Because he can escape this classical way of defining illnesses he looks beyond a patients limitations and into his gifts that have been caused or brought out by a disease In The Presidents Speech Sacks observes a group of aphasiacs unable to understand actual words only tones and rhetoric laughing at the Presidents emotional speech We normalsby our wish to be fooled were indeedAnd so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone that only the brain damaged remained intact undeceived Sacks 84 These aphasiacs who are afflicted by illness could hear beyond what was being said and could decipher the Presidents true tone into what he was saying Instead of being fooled like those without this ailment they understood more than words and the rhetoric comical What he was really saying instead of what he wanted us to hear was humorous Ray another Patient of Sacks who suffered from Tourettes came to him looking for a way to solve his tics for they were aliening him from society He excelled in various games that took an abnormal quickness of reflex such as ping-pong and he was extraordinarily musical He shined at drumming because of his sudden impulses caused

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